must stop after two minutes. It’s not a strategy for starting, it’s the
whole thing. Your habit can only last one hundred and twenty seconds.
One of my readers used this strategy to lose over one hundred
pounds. In the beginning, he went to the gym each day, but he told
himself he wasn’t allowed to stay for more than five minutes. He would
go to the gym, exercise for five minutes, and leave as soon as his time
was up. After a few weeks, he looked around and thought, “Well, I’m
always coming here anyway. I might as well start staying a little
longer.” A few years later, the weight was gone.
Journaling provides another example. Nearly everyone can benefit
from getting their thoughts out of their head and onto paper, but most
people give up after a few days or avoid it entirely because journaling
feels like a chore.* The secret is to always stay below the point where it
feels like work. Greg McKeown, a leadership consultant from the
United Kingdom, built a daily journaling habit by specifically writing
less than he felt like. He always stopped journaling before it seemed
like a hassle. Ernest Hemingway believed in similar advice for any kind
of writing. “The best way is to always stop when you are going good,”
he said.
Strategies like this work for another reason, too: they reinforce the
identity you want to build. If you show up at the gym five days in a row
—even if it’s just for two minutes—you are casting votes for your new
identity. You’re not worried about getting in shape. You’re focused on
becoming the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts. You’re taking
the smallest action that confirms the type of person you want to be.
We rarely think about change this way because everyone is
consumed by the end goal. But one push-up is better than not
exercising. One minute of guitar practice is better than none at all. One
minute of reading is better than never picking up a book. It’s better to
do less than you hoped than to do nothing at all.
At some point, once you’ve established the habit and you’re showing
up each day, you can combine the Two-Minute Rule with a technique
we call habit shaping to scale your habit back up toward your ultimate
goal. Start by mastering the first two minutes of the smallest version of
the behavior. Then, advance to an intermediate step and repeat the
process—focusing on just the first two minutes and mastering that
stage before moving on to the next level. Eventually, you’ll end up with